Here’s my secret. When I’m trying to stay awake on the overnight shift, I online shop. There’s something about the rush of adding things to your cart — even, maybe especially, if you have no intention of ever clicking order. Which is good for me, because I’m currently broke-ish. Or, more accurately, I’m on a fast track to brokesville because this month I went from having a full-time, steady-if-not-well-paying administrative job at a foundation to having a part-time job at another non-profit, one whose work I am infinitely more dedicated to and find much more satisfactory, but one where the hours and pay are significantly less.

Freelance! Wag! Babysitting! Cafe job! I thought to myself, pre-fast-track-to-brokesville. The possibilities seemed endless and easy, somehow, as if jobs and money are something that materialize when you need them and fit exactly to the mental picture you crafted for yourself for the period after Quitting Your First Job. I think it’s going to a bit harder than that, and absolutely more stressful. Especially given that to freelance write I need to have a computer, which means buying a new computer, which means parting with a solid chunk of my savings account. Alas. There’s always money to be spent, it turns out, even when there’s not much money to come by.

Anyways. There’s something weird about buying new clothes, shopping online, imagining endless Potential New Aesthetics for yourself. I find myself buying more and more clothes when I’m feeling bad about my body, as if to take control in some way over how it looks when I feel uncomfy with how it looks, when I hate how it’s shaped and where it’s soft. It’s pretty easy psychology, to be honest — find the void and fill it with something meaningless that feels controllable. The void is my body, the control is buying clothing. I’ve been trying for the last year or so to be more normal about my body, i.e. less rigidly controlling, less anxiously obsessive about it. Anxiety meds have helped a lot, like, a lot a lot, with the obsessive thought patterns, but there’s still the great swath of my brain that oh-so-typically wants nothing more than to be lithe, lissome. A perfectly controlled, perfectly thin being. Basically my bank account suffers madly to account for the fact that I have Body Issues™.

Anyways. It’s 1:26am and I have to be awake for another 6 hours and 34 minutes to finish this shift, then an hour+ home to bed, hopefully hopping in around 9:30am to sleep for 6 hours and then off again. This week is two night shifts back to back — they’re quiet and lonely and kind of surreal. Being awake at 3am, 4am, 5… no one else is. The world feels weighted and sleepy around you, even in New York. Back to staring longingly at my Urban Outfitters cart (my secret shame!!) and shopping for semi-useless Halloween-themed desk accessories :~)